Xavier: (Indestructible) (9 page)

“For you, sweet Cassandra, I find I’m willing to make an
exception.” Qin reached out to touch her face.

“I wouldn’t if I were you.” Xavier spoke for the first time.

Qin looked coolly at Xavier’s slouching figure, and the slits
in his eyes narrowed even further. “I wasn’t talking to you,
dog
.” Qin
smirked at him.

“When you try to touch what’s mine, you don’t have to be
talking to me,
chink
.” Xavier hadn’t moved a muscle.

Qin turned fully toward Xavier now. “You think you can
challenge me, mudderfucker?” Qin leaned closer to Xavier, trying to maintain
some privacy in the crowded restaurant and intimidate Xavier at the same time.

Xavier sat up, moving closer to the now seething man. “Any time
you’re ready to shorten your lifespan, let me know,” Xavier said softly.

Qin straightened to his full height. Both men stared at each
other silently for a few tense moments. “Cassandra, give your brothers my
regards. I will visit the house real soon.” Qin turned and smiled at her. “I
have extensive plans for you, and the summer is almost over.”

“Cassandra is no longer available for any of your plans. Move
the fuck on,” Xavier drawled.

Qin spoke through clenched teeth. “Your American friend will learn
to never insult Qin Wong.”

“Well, good luck with that. X ain’t gat to do shit, except stay
black and die,” Cassandra muttered. “And now-a-days, he doesn’t even have to
stay black.”

“Is that so? Then I guess it’s going to be death,” Qin smirked.

Xavier stared at Qin in that cold, still demeanor he’d worn
when she had first met him.

Qin returned his stare with a glare. Neither man wanted to give
an inch. The tension between them was one of pure hostility, both exuding
lethal strength and aggression. Qin gave in first, grunting in annoyance before
striding toward the exit with his entourage in tow, though both of his
bodyguards gave Xavier long looks before following their boss.

Xavier gazed steadily back at them.

“I gather you know who Qin is?” Cassandra asked him to break
the silence between them.

“Why do you think I know who that punk is?”

“Okay, so we’re going to play that game. You’re still trying to
deny who you are.”

Xavier started eating the conch salad the server had placed on
their table. He thoughtfully chewed on the shellfish
ceviche
. “You’ve
obviously made up your mind on who I am.”

“So that wasn’t a friend of yours who stopped those guys who
were following us?” Cassandra asked drily.

“What?” Xavier held her gaze, his body still, his expression
unreadable. “Why don’t you tell me what you think you know?” he asked calmly.

“Oh, so we’re going to play dumb?” She rolled her eyes at his
determination to continue being so secretive. “Okay, I’ll pretend that you
don’t know that there were two men following us and that you didn’t have them
intercepted the other night. I’ll continue to pretend that you didn’t notice my
stalkers weeks ago. Do you know who they are?”

“Who is stalking you?” Xavier was no longer calm, appearing
pissed that she was aware of her stalkers.  “When did this start? Do you know
who they are? Why are they watching you?”

“Yeah, I know who they are,” Cassandra muttered. “I’m sure you
know who they are as well.”

“Don’t mess with me, Cassandra.” Xavier glared at her. “Who is
following you?”

“Come to think of it, I don’t need to pretend,” she muttered
peevishly. “I really don’t know who you are. Before whatever this is between us
goes any further, why don’t you tell me what
I
need to know?”

Xavier stopped eating and pushed the bowl of salad away. He
leaned back in his seat, and his lips barely moved as he said, “It didn’t seem
to matter last night who the fuck I am.”

“Xavier—”

“You know me dammit,” he whispered fiercely. “You know all the
important shit like that I would die protecting you and I want you more than I
want my next breath.”

“Xavier—”

“No, we’re not doing this here!”

Cassandra was shocked at his sudden display of emotion.

The server placed their lunches on the table before them.

“Eat your lunch. We’ll talk later,” Xavier said more softly as
the server left them to it.

“Well, I’m certainly happy to see that you can lose that ‘daddy
cool’ persona,” Cassandra harrumphed.

Xavier grunted.

An hour later, Xavier placed his palm at the base of Cassandra’s
back and steered her toward the SUV in the parking lot. He handed her into the
car and moved around to the driver’s side door. The fine hairs on his arm and
the base of his neck tingled, alerting him of being watched. He dove to the
ground and whipped out his gun just as bullets pummeled the back of the SUV,
exactly where he’d been standing a few seconds before.

“Stay down,” Xavier shouted to Cassandra. He ran away from the
SUV, trying to draw the fire away from Cassandra and the number of taxi drivers
who were waiting for fares in the parking lot.

Qin’s men ran and followed him, guns blazing.

Xavier ducked and weaved among the parked cars in the lot,
staying low, making himself as small of a target as he could. Listening to the
noises around him, the direction of the gunfire and approaching footsteps,
Xavier was confident of where the shooters were. With no hesitation, and in a
move he knew would surprise his attackers, Xavier jumped into the air to gain
superior elevation and fired off six consecutive shots while suspended mid-air.
The bullets struck the men in their shoulders, stomach, and legs, forcing them
to the hard ground. His attackers safely disarmed, Xavier moved closer until he
stood over the two men. He coolly lodged a bullet squarely in the middle of
both men’s foreheads. They were dead.

Farther up in the parking lot, a dark Lexus pulled out of the
space close to the entrance, and the tires angrily scorched the paved driveway
as the driver accelerated onto the main road.

“Well, mudderfucker, I wasn’t interested in y’alls’ little mom
& pop drug trade in the islands. But you just made this shit personal,”
Xavier muttered as he watched the retreating vehicle. He jogged to the two men
on the ground and gleaned as much information as he could from the bodies before
the local authorities arrived.

Cassandra came to stand beside him.

“I guess it was too much to hope for you to stay put?” Xavier
asked dryly.

“Qin and his goons shot at you because I wouldn’t give him the
time of day, and
I
must stay put?” She frowned at him.

Xavier stared back at her without saying a word.

“I did stay down as you instructed until the shooting stopped
and Qin sped out of here,” Cassandra pointed out. “I should have anticipated
that ass would do something like this. He’s Chinese mafia and not used to
anyone on the island talking to him like you did.” She narrowed her eyes at his
continued silence. “You did know who he was.” Her voice was barely above a
whisper.

“Cassandra, I have to deal with this mess now.”

Police sirens could be heard coming in the distance.

“This will take some time.” Xavier gave her the keys to his
condo. “Wait at the condo while I sort this out with the local police.”

“Thanks for thinking of me, but I’m not leaving you here with them.
Our police can be a bit much, and there’s no telling how many of them are in
Qin’s pocket.”

Xavier gave her a hard kiss on the lips. “Go sit in the car and
put the air conditioning on. I can’t deal with your hard head right now.” He
turned away and pulled his phone out.

Xavier looked across at Cassandra as they walked barefoot on
the warm sandy beach that served as a backyard to his condo.
She is so damn
beautiful, and she wants to be with me. How the fuck can I trust that? She has
no clue that I’m a damn monster and is choosing to ignore the fact that I look
like a monster.
It was late afternoon, and the sun was low on the horizon,
making it seem as if the sun would soon enter the crystal clear water that
stretched endlessly before them. After the hot and humid hours they’d endured
in the parking lot of the restaurant, the light ocean breeze on their skin was quite
soothing and therapeutic. He knew he had a lot of shit to explain to her,
especially since he had no intention of ever letting her out of his life.

The unmistakable message from Qin was that he was going to try
and impose his will in regards to Cassandra. Getting Xavier out of the picture
was only the first step in his campaign.
There’s no fucking way I’ll let him
touch her!

“My name is Xavier Bautista. I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida,
with my mom in a single-parent household,” Xavier said softly.

Cassandra stopped walking and looked up at him. She seemed surprised
that he was speaking about himself, but there was no judgment in her expression.

“We weren’t poor or rich. My mom, who was originally from the
Dominican Republic, did the best she could, keeping food on the table, clothes
on us both, and maintaining our apartment in a fairly safe neighborhood. She
worked as a secretary in a local bank, not earning a lot, but we were never
hurting for anything. Her parents lived close by, so I grew up with them in my
life as well. I was always too big for my age and started playing football when
I was ten. I took to it like a duck to water, and pretty soon some of the
private high schools in the area wanted me on their squads. My mom was happy
for me to get a private school education without it costing her anything. Ever
since I could remember, she preached the importance of an education. She always
felt that the black man’s plight would only improve with education, so I
promised her that I would go to college and get a degree.”

“She sounds as though she’s an amazing woman,” Cassandra
whispered.

“She was.” Xavier swallowed the lump he always got in his
throat when he thought of his mother’s death. “My mother died when I was twelve
years old in a car accident.”

“Oh my God, X, I’m so sorry.” Cassandra wrapped her arms around
his waist.

For the first time in his life, Xavier let someone try to
soothe him over that loss. For years, his grandparents had tried, but he never
let them see the pain. Shocked that he was even capable of it, he quickly
blinked to push back the tears that had welled up in his eyes.
This is
exactly the shit I was trying to avoid. Suddenly I have feelings, and they’re
turning me into a fucking pussy!
He swallowed again and rested his head on
her soft hair.
God, she smells so damn good.
Her alluring feminine scent
was slowly driving him crazy, distracting him from his good intentions. He
cleared his throat to continue and hopefully distract himself from the effect
she was having on him. “An asshole teenager thought it was smart to go for a
joyride in his dad’s Benz after consuming a shitload of alcohol. Said asshole
had four other teenagers in the car, who were just as stoned as he was. They
all died in the collision and took my mom with them. I was the only person who
walked out of that accident with minor scrapes and bruises.”
And it was also
the first time I questioned who I was. Who the hell walked out of a mangled car
unscathed?

“Indestructible,” a voice whispered.

Cassandra clutched him tight against her. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

Xavier melted into her softness. She was a soothing balm to his
tortured memories. Feeling slightly weak in the knees, he sank with her to the
warm sand. He held her in front of him between his thighs with her back pressed
against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. “I went
to college on a full athletic scholarship and was scouted to enter the NFL
draft in my sophomore year. I opted to get my degree in criminology instead.”

“Why would you chance getting injured in college and missing
out on a lucrative contract?” Cassandra asked.

“My mother believed no black man could survive in a white man’s
world without the weapons of the white man. Education is the white man’s most
lethal weapon.”

“The last thing we need is more uneducated black men.”

“Exactly.” Xavier swallowed, falling silent briefly as he
remembered his overworked mother. “I need to explain why I am the way I am
about your safety. Everyone who I’ve ever cared about has died. I have no one
left.”

“That can’t be true,” she whispered. “X—”

“No, you need to listen to me. This is important.”

She nodded her head and fell silent again.

“In my senior year, we were coming back from an away game when
our bus hit a patch of black ice trying to avoid a car being driven recklessly.
The blizzard had been bad the entire drive back and visibility had been
extremely poor that late at night. However, our driver was very experienced in driving
through such storms and had warned Coach that it would be better if we waited
the storm out instead of driving through it. Coach wanted to get back. A car
with a group of young people came out of nowhere.”

“Good God!”

“Yeah, so despite the driver’s experience and the precautions
taken with equipping the bus for such conditions, the bus spun out of control,
ploughed through the guardrails, and plunged into a ditch on the side of the
highway.”

“Oh my God, X, that’s terrible,” Cassandra hissed.

Xavier never spoke about his life like this and wouldn’t be surprised
if he was sounding as if he was telling a story about someone else’s life. This
had happened so many years ago it almost felt like it was about someone else.
“I remember being upside down, covered with glass, and snow coming through the
broken window. Some guys were badly hurt and trapped, but I was able to climb
out of the window and started helping some of the players out from the broken
windows.” Xavier stopped speaking, horrified at the emotion that had crept into
his voice. “The fire started in the rear of the bus.”

“It’s okay, X, I understand. You don’t have to talk about this
if you don’t want to.”

If only that were true, but she needs to know what she’s
dealing with.
He swallowed and clamped down on his emotions, icing himself
to feel no pain, as he had been doing for years.

“I was able to pull some of them from the bus before it exploded.”
He didn’t tell her that he had been less than a foot away from the bus when it
had burst into flames. While sparks had lit his skin, he had healed almost
immediately. “Some had bad cuts and burns, but despite my efforts, too many
died that night.” Xavier stopped speaking, as again his throat became clogged.
I
shouldn’t have been able to walk away from that accident. No one who sat in my
section of the bus survived.

Again, the whispered response to his retelling of events:
indestructible
.

“God, X, I’m so sorry.”

Xavier squeezed her tighter to convey his appreciation of her
support. “After I graduated from college, I spent only one year in the NFL
before enlisting and spending a few years in US Special Forces and then joining
the DEA six years ago.” The money he had earned in the NFL and over the years
with the US government had been sitting in an investment fund earning him
substantial wealth. He had had nothing to spend money on until meeting
Cassandra.

“Ah! I knew I was right!” She turned in his arms, excitedly threw
her arms around his neck, and kissed him on his lips.

He pulled away from her and held her gaze. “Yeah, baby, you’re
right. But I’m not here for your brothers. I’m on an extended leave.” He almost
wanted to shake her to make her understand the pain he was in at the
possibility of losing her. “Cass, you have to listen to me. My mom and
teammates are not the only people who died in my life. The reason I’m on leave
is that, following my last undercover assignment, six men from my team at the
DEA, some of their family members, and my grandparents were assassinated.”

“Oh my God, X!” Cassandra covered her mouth with her hands, and
her eyes glistened with sympathy. “So much pain,” she whispered.

“No, don’t get upset for me.” Xavier tightened his grip on her
forearms. “Those bastards who killed my family need your sympathy more. I used
my time on leave to ensure that there was no one left to fuel more revenge
killings; no one left to fuck with decent people!”
This thing in me is a
curse. Everyone around me eventually dies.
The icy fingers of dread
slithered up his spine. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her against
his shivering body at the thought of possibly losing her.

“You have to see that everyone who I’ve ever cared about has
died,” he said again, wanting to ensure she understood the risk. “I can’t lose
you too. Cassandra, do you understand what I’m saying to you? Please, Cass, I
need you to listen when I tell you to stay out of harm’s way. I need to know
that you’re safe.” He held her face against his chest and couldn’t hear her
mumbled response. She tried to lift her head, but he was reluctant to let her
go.

She pushed at his chest.

He loosened his grip to allow her to raise her head and look up
at him. “I’m truly sorry for all that you have gone through,” Cassandra said
tenderly. “I can’t imagine losing so much. I will try my best not to add to
your pain. I don’t deliberately set out to go against what you’ve asked me to
do. However, in order for me to maintain my voice, not only with my brothers
and thugs like Qin and Nado, you have to allow me to use what I know about them
to defuse the situation. Their response to you would be to draw their guns
because they perceive a threat from you. Their response to me will be different
because they don’t consider me a threat.”

“I don’t give a damn what their perception is. This is going to
get more violent before it gets better. You can’t be hurt, Cassandra,” Xavier
insisted.

“Okay, X.” She shushed him, trying to alleviate his concerns. “Stop
worrying about me, please.” She caressed his face tenderly. “In future, if
there are weapons involved, I will rely on your expertise.”

Xavier hugged her close. “Tell me about the men following you.”

“I’m sure I won’t tell you anything you don’t already know,”
she teased.

He squeezed her in response. “Humor me. Tell me about them
anyway.”

“Well, I don’t really have much to tell. I noticed two Asian
guys tailing me a few days before I realized you were following me too. They
didn’t try to approach me or even talk to me, so I’m still clueless as to what
Qin wants. I mean, if he was interested in me as a woman, having his men stalk
me is a strange way to court a girl, right?”

“You thought I was stalking you too. What’s the difference?”
Xavier grumbled.

“Oh, I don’t know. Your approach was so sweet. And I don’t mind
being stalked by you.” She laughed.

He grunted, his thoughts consumed with Qin’s violent action.

She continued to tease him. “I hope you know that you’re not
going to get the sand out of those clothes in a hurry.” Cassandra giggled.
“You’re sitting in damp sand.”

“At least I have on jeans. You have on a dress,” he smirked,
picking up a fistful of sand and spreading it on her exposed legs.

“Hey!” Cassandra sprang up from his lap. She walked a few feet
away from him, meticulously filled both of her palms with sand, and threw the
missiles at his head, catching him in his face.

Xavier growled in mock anger, and an impromptu sand-ball fight
ensued. In mere seconds, they were both completely covered with fine white
sand, but Xavier was definitely the loser in this fight. There was barely an
inch of skin on his face and neck that wasn’t coated with sand.

She started running back toward the condo, giggling
uncontrollably as he advanced on her, growling with false outrage.

Despite her being a collegiate athlete, he was too fast, and his
long legs closed in on her in seconds. He swooped down and picked her up by her
waist and threw her over his shoulder.

“Hey,” Cassandra shrieked.

“I’m going to teach you proper manners.” He slapped her ass
playfully. “Settle down.” Xavier strode onto the pool deck that bled onto the
sandy beach. Walking past the infinity-style swimming pool, he ignored the water
sparkling bright turquoise, reflecting the clear blue sky above, and walked
directly into the outdoor glass-paneled shower stall.

“Don’t you dare,” Cassandra yelled.

Laughing out loud, he let her slide down his body to stand on
her feet. The feel of her against his heated flesh was pure torture. To
distract his eager cock, he deliberately turned on the faucet. Cold water
pummeled them both.

“X! Don’t you know better than to wet a black woman’s hair? I’m
going to brain you!” She fought and cussed at him, giggling through her pretend
ire.

Xavier held on tight to her squirming figure. In seconds, their
clothes were plastered to their bodies.
What the hell was I thinking? Now
that damn dress is almost transparent. The material molds every curve, every valley.
She isn’t wearing a bra. Shoot my dumb ass.

He hissed as she continued trying to get away from him, her
struggles serving only to exacerbate the tenuous hold he had on his control. He
shivered with need, his cock lengthening, nestling into the cradle of her
stomach. There was no way his predicament wasn’t glaringly obvious to her. He
grimaced and stood as still as he could.

“Oh.” Cassandra stopped moving suddenly. “X?”